Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Blue Diamond Trail, Vegas

sRick and I just returned from an awesome mtn bike trip to Vegas's famous Blue Diamond Trail. If you want a fun but challenging ride, this is certainly it! Gradual climbs, minor sand, HUGE boulders on the some of the trail, awesome hard packed single track and not a lot of cactus makes this trail good for building self confidence on the bike and fun for any level rider.

Let's go back a couple of days to my Saturday ride with my friend L.J. and Rick. Talk about a BLAST!!! We took Rick's Extreme Heat bike course and did it backwards.... We practiced a lot of climbs using this route but man, it sure was FUN to see how much I've improved on my bike since I started. I LOVE IT! After that we enjoyed some really fun downhills that made the morning perfect.

Sunday I jumped on my road bike with my women's riding group and grabbed just over 30 miles. I was pretty happy to get some climbs in as well, though at the time thought I was going to have a heart attack. No more road rides until my bike gets fixed though. Our leader says something is wrong with my derailleur. It looks like it's just hanging I guess.

So Rick and I left for Vegas after my road ride on Sunday to see some friends, eat some awesome food and ride the Blue Diamond Trail. We woke up super early to gorgeous weather! In fact, I was cold when we left the house if you can believe it. Starting off we picked a route that ended up being mostly hike-a-bike, which was not too bad in retrospect but I was pretty frustrated at this point. Never being out there before I was afraid our entire ride would be on foot. Fortunately we made our way to a great trail and we finally got to ride. The climbing was gradual with some steep parts I had to walk and the downhill was freaken awesome! Some of the trail had pretty big size boulders so trying to dodge them and stay vertical was a fun exercise for me. I think I only had one fall and it was pretty minor.

If you get the opportunity to ride this trail I say take it! You can shorten the distance or go up to 30 miles...either way - do it!